Last week I released my first meal plan as a free download for anyone signing up for my mailing list. The meal plan has a page devoted to getting started with the plan but that is necessarily brief, so I wanted to share a few more thoughts with everyone on how best to work the plan.
In general, I’m not a big fan of meal plans. I have friends who have made business’s out of creating them, making software so you can create your own, or providing somewhat flexible plans for people eating real food. I think all this is a sizable improvement of traditional static plans.…

Buying organics is expensive, right? Everyone knows that. Talk to anybody and they’ll tell you that. It’s one of the big reasons that healthy diets are perceived as way over the top expensive. Well beyond the reach of average work-a-day folks like us.
Now, organics are not the be all and end all of healthy eating. Sara over at The Healthy Home Economist has a great post on about how eating organic will never make you healthy and I completely agree. That said, if you want to find food labels with pronouncable ingredients you cannot beat many organic foods. Many are excellent choices that I’d rate pretty high up on the Granny scale of old-fashioned goodness.…

Let's talk potatoes shall we? The lowly dietary staple that everyone and his brother runs down as the unhealthiest thing ever. So simple, so ordinary we use it to describe lazy people ( couch potatoes ) or plain eaters ( meat and potato kinda-guy ). That potato.
Let's just say straight out of the gate that I adore potatoes in just about any form. And I firmly disagree with any notion that they are unhealthy in any way. That isn't what I want to talk about today. Nope, not at all. I want to talk about the processing of good healthy food into stuff that isn't as healthy and costs a mega-truckload more to buy using the lowly potato as an example.

If you are on a budget you have probably noticed that the amount of food you can buy with your budgeted dollars is shrinking. Each month you're getting just slightly less food than you did the prior month. Twelve months of slightly less food adds up to a sizeable reduction in how far your food budget goes each year. This has been going on for many years now and most of us are feeling the pinch most acutely. And by us I don't just mean people trying to get processed food out of their families lives. I mean everyone.

We're wrapping up our six week foray into Costcoland here on Granny's Vital Vittles! I feel I've learned a lot about the store and what they have. I've been pretty impressed overall. While organics or real food are clearly a small percentage of what they have on the shelves it still adds up to enough food and enough savings to make the trip worthwhile.

What jumps out at you when you first arrive at Costco? There's the crowds, the TVs at the entrance, and the pallets of mostly processed junk food near the door. There's all the clothes and the books, the luggage and appliances. It'd be very easy to get the impression that there's no real food to be found here. But if you keep walking ...

What stores is it safe to trust? Many find this the really pertinent question when it comes to choosing where to shop. They have good feelings about one store over another. They ask themselves if the stores buyers do a good job vetting companies products? Do they ensure that the products on their shelves are what they say they are?

So my membership is paid up and now I am officially part of the Costco club! So far so good! I've made just one official shopping trip there and was pretty impressed with what I found. First, before we get to that I'd love to share with you my general thoughts on the place in the form of questions and answers.

Restore your health by cooking real food like your grandmother did.

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“I was skeptical but interested in finding out more about this topic. Kathy was very thorough and broke down everything step by step. She allows for special circumstances to better fit your lifestyle and any challenges you face in your family. Lots of resources to investigate on your own. In fact, she encourages you to do your own research.” - Marlene